deposit it near the maternal domicile, that his disposition as a provider may be made known; he must chase and slay the deer and make from an entire buckskin a pair of moccasins for the bride, and from other skins and textiles a complete feminine suit, to the end that his skill in hunting, skin-dressing, and weaving may be displayed; and finally he must fabricate or obtain for the maiden's use a necklace of seashell or of silver, in order that his capacity for long journeys or successful barter may be established; but if circumstances prevent him from performing these duties actually he may perform them symbolically, and such performance is usually acceptable to the elder-people. After these preliminaries are completed, he is formally adopted by his wife's parents, yet remains merely a perpetual guest, subject to dislodgment at his wife's behest, though he cannot legally withdraw from the covenant; if dissatisfied, he can only so illtreat wife or children as to compel his own expulsion.

The once considerable Seri stock has been reduced to a single tribe by reason of deep-seated animosity to alien peoples and constant warfare. They are probably the most primitive people in North America, and their disposition is so savage and treacherous that they remain nearly unknown to scientific students. Fortunately some information concerning their social customs and characteristics has recently been obtained, from which it appears that their demotic unit is the clan, that descent is reckoned exclusively in the female line, and that their simple housebowers and other stable property (chiefly rude stone implements, ollas, and a few baskets) belong to the housewives. Theoretically their marriage relation is monogamous, though since the great reduction of the warriors through ceaseless strife a sort of tentative and indefinite polygyny has grown up; theoretically also clan exogamy prevails, yet there are indications that during recent years the clans are partially broken down and some of the marital relations dependent thereon relaxed; while tribal endogamy is probably more complete than in any other American tribe now extant-in Seri ethics the deepest vice is conjugal relation with alien peoples, just as the noblest virtue is the shedding of alien blood. The definite marital arrangements (which relate wholly to the first marriage and do not extend to subsequent polygynous unions) are not known, so far as the initial movement is concerned, but the matter soon comes under the

cognizance of the older people, especially the kinswomen of the prospective bride. At this stage the prospective groom is a rather apathetic suitor, whose claims are presented chiefly by his older female relatives, when, if the suit is favorably regarded by the maiden's mother and uncles, he is provisionally installed as a member of the family without ceremony, without any suggestion of purchase-price, and without presents. He is then expected to earn a permanent place in the maiden's family by two tests-one material, one moral,-i. e., first, by demonstrating his ability as a provider, and, second, by establishing his probity as an implacable foe to alien blood. In order to pass the first test he must vigorously enter into the chase and support all the female members of the family, with their dependents, by the products of his skill and industry in hunting and fishing, for a full round of the seasons-i. e., for a year, according to the crude time-measure of the Seri. At the same time he becomes the general protector of the mother and other female relatives, and the special protector of the maiden, whose bower and pelicanskin blanket he shares, not as spouse but as continent comrade, for the same round of seasons, when; if this ordeal of tribal fidelity and self-control is passed, and the test of his ability as a provider is satisfactory, he is formally installed in the family as a permanent consort-guest, and his children are added to the clan of his mother-in-law.'

1 While the marital regulations and observances of the Seri Indians stand in definite serial relation to those of many other peoples, the student will properly observe that they represent a stage not clearly discovered among other peoples-i. e, an extrapolate stage, so far as the known series is concerned; and accordingly it seems needful to note in some detail the source of information. There are two Seri Indians known to speak the Spanish language, viz, Colusio and Mashem' (alias Francisco Estorga, nicknamed "Palado"). Colusio resides in the Mexican-Yaki village called Pueblo Seri, ox on the other side of the river in Hermosillo, the capital of Sonora, and has not lived with his tribe since early youth and is regarded by them as an outlaw. Mashem, who was taught Spanish many years ago by missionaries under the direction of Señor Pas. cual Encinas, lives with the tribe on Tiburon island and the adjacent mainland, has a wife and children and one or two supernumerary wives, and is in every respect, save in that he wears a hat and knows an alien tongue, a typical Seri Indian in knowledge, disposition, and custom. In addition there is an aged dame, the elder-woman in one of the leading clans, known on the Mexican frontier as Juana Maria, who has some knowledge of Spanish. On November 6-10, 1894, the writer visited a rancheria, including about sixty Seri men, women, and children, temporarily established near Rancho de San Francisco de Costa Rica, belonging to Señor Encinas, on the Seri frontier (cf. National Geographic Magazine, vol. vii, p. 125, pl. xiv), accompanied by Señor AlvemarLeon as Spanish interpreter and Mr William Dinwiddie as photographer. Both Mashem and Juana Maria were of the group. A large number of portrait and group photographs were secured, this being, so far as known, the second time that Seri Indians were ever

These instances, of which all but the last are chosen nearly at random, fall into a natural order defined by culture-grade. The first place is occupied by the ancient patriarchs; the next place is occupied by the Omaha Indians, with the Kwakiutl a little lower; still lower stand the Salish and the Seneca; on about the same plane as the Seneca the Zuñi find place, and lowest of all, so far as the American aborigines, and indeed the aboriginal peoples of the world are definitely known, is the place of the Seri. The several peoples may be regarded as representing typical stages in the development of marital regulations and observances; and while the peoples are so distinct as to negate the assumption that the stages belong to a single continuous series, it would seem photographed and the first time that satisfactory pictures were made. A considerable part of each day was devoted by the writer to collecting a vocabulary, with the aid of Señor Alvemar-Leon, Mashem, and sometimes Juana Maria, and usually quite a group of Seri men and women were gathered about, and to these Mashem frequently appealed, while they constantly expressed approval or disapproval of the repetition of the terms, so that the opportunities for eliminating the personal equation in pronunciation were exceptionally good. In connection with inquiries concerning vocables, and while the attention of the Indians was absorbed in this (to them) innocent amusement, questions were asked concerning the applications of the terms in such order as to elicit all possible information concerning the industrial arts, games, social organization, beliefs, and customs of the tribe, and this information was jotted down. The extent of the information may be judged from the fact that in the course of the half dozen interlocutions full details were obtained (for the first time) of the wanton killing of two Americans on Tiburon island a few months before. In an early conference the information set forth above concerning the Seri marriage custom was incidentally brought out. Señor Alvemar-Leon and one or two bystanders expressed surprise and amusement at the naive statement concerning the moral test, but their attention was purposely diverted lest some suspicion on the part of the Indians might be raised and they might thereby be rendered secretive Then, during two later conferences, when both Mashem and Juana Maria were present, and when other Seri women were near by and freely participating, the line of inquiry was so turned as to touch on different aspects of the essential features in their marriage customs, and all the information thus obtained on three different days was consistent. On January 3, 1896, the writer spent half a day in Hermosillo with Colusio, who described his meeting with Commissioner John Russell Bartlett on December 31, 1851, and recounted the circumstances connected with his giving of a Seri vocabulary (the best extant previous to 1894) to Commissioner Bartlett. It was ascertained that while Colusio remembers enough of his mother tongue to act as a rather unsatisfactory interpreter, he has not lived among his people since his infancy, considerably more than half a century ago, and knows nothing concerning the Seri beliefs, social organization, marriage customs, mortuary customs, etc, specific inquiries concerning such matters eliciting either no information at all or information evidently relating to the Yaki Indians, with whom he has associated intimately throughout nearly all his life. Colusio is now (1896) about seventy-five years old (Commissioner Bartlett estimated his age at about thirty in 1851). His statements indicate that the commissioner was misinformed as to his residence with the Seri in 1851, and that he was then, as for several years before and nearly all the time since, domiciled with Yaki Indians (cf. "Personal Narrative of Explorations and Incidents nected with the United States and Mexican Boundary Commission, Russell Bartlett, United States Commissioner," 1854, vol. 1, pp. 463-466).

con

by John

fair to consider them as normal steps in human development, just as the Seven Ages caught in poetic vision by the Bard of Avon stand for the life-history of a man, or much as the phylogeny of a species is epitomized in the ontogeny of the organism. Accordingly the growth of marriage throughout the greater part of its course is depicted in these stages and in intermediate steps, of which many are known, in such manner as to be retraceable backward or forward with considerable confidence.

Let the record be traced forward; and let its beginning be scanned with special care. The record begins with a discrete group of people welded by consanguinity and bound by community in language, in arts, and in beliefs-a group comprising a single great family of women whose lives and whose blood are sacred unto the family, and of warlike spouses whose hands are against all other men; in each conjugal family of parents and their progeny the wife and mother is queen, the owner of the meager property, the distributor of food, the controller of the comings and goings of children, the adviser and dictator unto her consort-guest, and her just behests are enforced by her brothersand as such all of her clansmen, young and old, are reckoned. When daughters grow up they remain with the mothers and take spouses, and so also do the granddaughters and the greatgranddaughters in their turn, and thus each conjugal family grows into a clan. With the multiplication of clans in each such group in the past came occasion for dissension and separation; but now and then clans intermarried and thereby remained amicable, and consequently grew in strength; and, through survival of the fittest, intermarriage between clan and clan persisted. In the typical case of the Seri interclan marriage is continued in order that tribal union may be maintained; mating or even sporadic connection with aliens is absolutely prohibited, in order that the integrity of the tribe may be preserved; while monogamy, perhaps a heritage from bestial ancestry, is retained, partly as a fitting regal prerogative of the reigning wife and mother, partly as a provision against intestine strife, partly through the weakness of ill-developed conjugal instinct. It is especially significant that in this stage the man is a suitor not so much from personal inclination as from tribal incentive, and while mating is in minor measure an expression of mutual attachment, it is so regulated as to inure to the benefit of the tribe; and it is to this

end that the qualities of the groom-elect are tested to the satisfaction of the feminine legislators and their fraternal administrators in each family and clan. Thus, in this initial stage, marriage is primarily a collective institution for the benefit of the group, and individual caprice is so far subordinated to demotic welfare as to be constantly blasted in the bud; accordingly there are no presents to curry favor, no purchase-price, no exchange of property (of which there is practically none), nothing but the test of fitness (1) for contributing to the support of the clan, and (2) for protecting the lives of the tribe from foemen's attacks and the blood of the tribe from contamination. In this stage the conjugal characteristics of the somewhat superficial sort commonly noted are (1) actual or constructive monogamy; (2) presumptively strict clan exogamy; (3) absolute tribal endogamy, and (4) the complete absence of the idea of purchase. These characteristics stand for the primitive form of marriage, so far as known in America; yet it is worthy of special note that the essential and fundamental characteristic is the collective motive under which marriage is prescribed for the welfare of the group, rather than inspired by individual appetite and selfish inclination.

The successively higher stages may be lightly touched: In that represented by the pacific and undoubtedly composite Zuñi tribe the organization remains essentially maternal, and the chief modification is the relaxation of the fierce tribal endogamy and the abandonment (save in a curious vestigeal form which need not here be developed) of the moral test of the prospective groom, though the material test persists; monogamy also persists, though rather through inertia than legislation, and in such wise that its infraction would be considered bizarre or grotesque, or even insane, rather than criminal, while clan exogamy is strictly enforced. So, too, the would-be bride is the chief suitor, and in large measure the motive remains collective rather than individual, and the mating is regulated largely by the elder-women and their brothers, with the aid of the shamans; and it is especially significant that one of the duties of the elders and shamans is to fan the feeble personal inclination and encourage boldness, and that certain ceremonials typifying the fecundity of the earth and the leading people thereof are of highly suggestive character. Essentially the same stage appears to be represented by the